Miasma
by Merlee Wishine
Summary: The Meisters and Weapons of Shibusen are in grave danger. Separated from one another in a hostile environment, they're pressed for time to find one another before their souls are taken and used for evil. Problem is, all of their memories have been stolen. Will they be able to reach safety? (Rated M for some violence. SoMa, BlaTsu, possibly KidLiz.)


**_Day 1  
Death the Kid_**

* * *

My head hurts. My whole body hurts. I am lying on the ground, that I can tell. Through the pain, I can just barely feel the ground beneath me, hard and cold against my cheek and torso. I'm so cold. So very cold and in so much pain. I know that if I don't get out of here and find help soon, I will most certainly die.

I open my eyes slowly, and though my vision is hazy, I can see some of my surroundings. It's pure chaos. It's dark and dingy, there are piles of scrap and rubble and junk in every direction that I can see. There's dirt and grime on almost every surface, and there's missing chunks of the concrete floor. And the worst of it all, it's all so irregular. There is no pattern, no order. The whole room is an utter mess. I _have_ to get out of here.

With what little strength I have, I push myself up onto my feet with a grunt. I'm dizzy at first and I almost topple over, but I slowly regain a little of my balance and can stand a little. My vision clears slightly. I look below me. Through my blurred vision, I can easily see that I've been lying in a pool of blood, I'm pretty sure that it's my ow n, and I am absolutely covered in it. I make a dismal attempt to inspect myself for any injuries that could be the cause of it and I realize several things. I am wearing a long sleeved, white dress shirt, and it's obvious that it was a very nice shirt once, but now it's ripped and torn and stained with my blood. The same goes for my black trousers. I have a ring shaped somewhat like a skull on the middle finger of my left hand, but it doesn't look like I have one on the right. I also appear to be missing my right shoe. It feels wrong. Incomplete. Uneven. The sight of it repulses me.

Despite my headache, I try my best to recall a memory that might explain all of this, but my mind pulls a blank. Slowly, I begin to realize that I don't recognize anything about this place, about the things I have seen, about myself. Who… who am I? I don't know where I came from, what I look like, or even my own name. Is anyone looking for me? Should I be looking for anyone? I don't know. Who am I? What am I? Where is my family? Do I have a family? What am I doing here? Am I supposed to be here? I don't know. I don't know. All I know is that I am in pain, I've lost a lot of blood, I am slowly dying where I stand, and I absolutely have to get out of this horribly chaotic excuse for a room.

The room is huge and cluttered, so it may take a while for me to find an exit. I begin to move about and look, slowly and dizzily. I keep this hopeless search up for a good eight minutes or so, when I suddenly hear a loud sound from the far end of the room behind me. Someone had just opened up a large metal door. Then there are footsteps. Fast, heavy footsteps coming in my direction. I know that it can't be good. I panic. I run. I know that I either have to find a way out or find a place to hide, and that I must find either of them quickly or die.

My body disagrees. I haven't even gone eight steps before I start breathing heavily and I find myself in even more pain. My head is absolutely throbbing. I'm so dizzy. I can hardly see because my vision is so blurring and fading in and out without warning. The whole world seems to be spinning and falling apart. The footsteps don't stop. They sound so close. I look behind me in my panic to see if anyone is there, but instead I trip over an uneven spot on the floor. I break my fall with my hands, but instead of comfort, a sharp pain in my forearms, chest, sides, neck, and cheeks greets me. Iit feels like a wound is being stretched back open. As proof, my shirt that once merely stippled with my blood is now drenched in it. I can feel blood running down my entire body. The footsteps are closer now. I try to scramble to my feet, but instead I find myself tumbling to the floor and falling on my rear instead. The footsteps only get closer, very close. I try and force myself up again with a painful grunt, but my attempt has failed.

I see a dark figure, wearing what looks like a trench coat, overalls, a military-fashioned hat, scarf over his mouth, rubber boots, gloves, and sunglasses. Despite my horrible vision, I can tell that it's a man. He looks strong. He stops and inspects me. He pulls the collar of his coat next to his mouth and I can barely hear him say "He's still alive. Do you want me to kill him now?" Without missing a hesitating, he pulls out a sharp piece of metal that glistens in the small amount of light. It's a sword, I know, and it's almost like I can feel life pulsing through it. I can feel my eyes grow wide as my heavy breathing turns into a pant of sheer terror.

All of my efforts to survive have done nothing.

I'm going to die at the hands of this man.

He touches the sword to my neck just barely. It looks like he's going to try and slash my windpipe open. He pauses, reveling in the moment and playing with my fear. He will taunt me in the last remaining minute of my life for a laugh. If only I could take advantage of this moment.

Suddenly, as if that thought had commanded it to, my body starts to act on its own. I throw my weight towards the floor and duck a split second before the man makes his move to slice my throat open.

I find myself doing a backward cartwheel to kick the man in the stomach and send him flying into the air. He's falling back down towards the ground when I jump up and force him back up with me by kicking his lower back. In mid air, I take his head with my hands and slam it into my knee with all of my strength. I can hear his skull crack. When we both land, I twist his head and break his neck for good measure. He falls to the ground and blood slowly engulfs the space where he's landed. There's no doubt that he is dead.

With a shiver, it occurs to me that I never gave the guy a chance to counter me. I begin to wonder where that sudden strength came from, and where I had learned to fight like that. I certainly couldn't have attacked him like that without some sort of training. Where could I have learned that? Why did I learn it? Did I learn it to have the strength to do good things, or was I trained to do such things for destruction and evil? I don't find an answer. Regardless of the guilt I have, I turn and walk away from the dead man. There's no use in crying over spilled milk now, and my survival has to be the only thing on my mind.

Any strength I had while fighting that man is now nonexistent. My pain and dizziness returns, and it is much worse than it had been before the fight. My vision, already darkened, is slowly fading to pitch black. I'm running on borrowed time, I know, and judging on the way things are going, there isn't much of it left to spare, if any.

I find myself right much sooner than I had hoped. Again, there are footsteps, quick and angry. But how? It's impossible. That man couldn't have survived my attacks, and there was nobody else in the room.

Curiosity and fear takes me over as I turn around to see who or what had been charging at me. I'm surprised to see not the man that I had attacked, but a girl with a blade similar- no, _identical_\- to the one the man had been holding attached to her shoulder where an arm would have been. They are connected, I see. They are two parts of the same being. I can feel the same pulse rushing through the girl as I had in the sword. I can hardly believe it. The life I had felt pulsing through the sword was real. It's _alive_. It's alive, and it's charging right for me at full and unbelievable speed.

"You killed my meister, you piece of shit!" The girl shouts, charging directly towards me with an obvious intention to kill.

I stand motionless. I know that I don't have the strength or even the motivation to fight back or even run. Though I may have fought against it before, I now have no choice but to stand back and accept my death. It was stupid to think that I could outrun it when it was running behind me so closely all this time. I close my eyes and prepare myself for the worst, hopelessly wishing that my life would flash before my eyes so I can die with at least one precious, tender, and pleasant memory intact. My request is, of course, denied. No memories come to my side.

I take in one final breath and there is a scream of pain and terror. Blood is shed, removed from a body entirely, and a life is lost. I freeze, waiting for the feeling of life to leave me. But that moment never comes, and I slowly begin to realize that the scream of terror had not come from me, and it was not my life that had been lost. I open my eyes just in time to see the girl with the sword arm fall over, dead.

Before I have time to question it, I hear a sound from above, footstep, but these footsteps are different from the rest. There's elegance to their sound, a gracefulness that could be compared to a bird in flight. I find the energy to look up just in time to make out a delicate figure leap from rafters in the ceiling to the disorganized ground below, giving the appearance of flying through the air. I can barely tell that the figure is a female, and she is carrying a bow, but I don't see any arrows or anything else that she would be able to fire from it. She reaches the ground, landing gracefully in front of me and in front of the sword-girl that she just killed, and tosses her bow into the air. Her bow turns into a human girl just before it hits the ground, and both of the girls give me curious glances in the same instant that I loose all of my energy and collapse against the floor again.


End file.
